


Once For Everybody Who Got Left Behind

by pukeandcry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, ghost au, minor character death (past)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:12:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukeandcry/pseuds/pukeandcry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam doesn’t know how to wrap his head around this, because the question shouldn’t be -- the question should be <em>how is there a ghost in his room</em>, not whether or not he’s done something to offend it. “Well, like. I might’ve told him that ghosts don’t exist?”</p><p>“Oh, no, he doesn’t like that,” Louis says.</p><p>(or, the AU where Zayn is a ghost, and Liam moves into his attic).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once For Everybody Who Got Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> ghost zayn au, because apparently i am fixated on this idea? warning for major character death, but that's kind of implied when zayn's a ghost? everyone else stays alive though, although there are passing mentions of past minor character death as well. CRIMINAL LACK OF SEXY POTTERY SCENES, SORRY :(

February’s not been the best month for Liam. Not historically, and specifically not this one.

And really, he could’ve handled the whole out-of-a-job thing, honestly. Like, it was alright work, but it had never particularly been his dream to co-edit a mostly-nonsense, vaguely new-age lifestyle newsletter read mostly by aging hippies. But Dani had gotten him the job through one of her dance mates, a girl called Rain who did something she called “movement art” and was regularly barefoot in public, and who was Liam to complain? It was a job, and he got to write sometimes when he wasn’t correcting other people’s writing, and it paid actual money.

Still, he’d only been briefly surprised, and then not subsequently not surprised at all, when he’d turned up to work one day at the beginning of February to find the rest of the staff clearing out their things in boxes. “Oh,” his boss had said, carelessly yanking down a tapestry that hung behind his desk. “Hasn’t anyone told you?”

Something about tax, as it turned out. And specifically, the non-payment of it. For like, almost a decade.

Which is almost impressively negligent, in Liam’s opinion.

So he’d shoved his small collection of personal belongings, plus a few of the nicer pens, into his bag, and by the time his train was pulling back into the station near their flat, he’d mostly convinced himself that it was probably a good thing. New opportunities, and all.

He probably could’ve handled it.

And then three weeks later, Dani had been sitting at their kitchen table when he’d come home from the shops, which he’d immediately taken as a bad omen, as they’d never used their kitchen table once since they’d moved into the flat more than three years ago. Mostly they ate on the sofa. But Dani had been at the table, sitting with her back very straight, and her hands folded in front of her, and when she’d said they needed to talk, Liam had known it was over before she’d even started to speak.

Afterward, he’d offered to move out, because it seemed like the right thing to do, somehow. Dani’d protested, saying she’d go, but Liam found he couldn’t even think about the possibility of staying on there alone, not without her presence in the flat, so eventually she agreed, packed a small bag, told him she’d stay with her mum for a bit, and kissed him one last time on the cheek before closing the door softly behind her.

And that had been that.

Harry and Louis had been the only bit of good luck he’s had in ages, really. Their’s had been the first advert for a room he’d seen, or at least the first one he could afford, sort of, on the tiny bit of money he’d managed to save up before he’d been sacked. And the two of them hadn’t seemed like bad sorts at all when they met at a sandwich shop to talk, and really, that had been good enough for Liam. All in all, it takes less than a week between Dani finishing with him and Liam ending up in a taxi, his belongings in a few bags heaped around his feet.

So that’s how Liam turns up in front of the house -- a strange, sort of dilapidated little Victorian of a thing, squashed down into miniature and dropped in between two chip shops on a back street he’d never noticed before -- turning his new set of keys over in his hands, totally unable to recognize his life now from how it had been just a month ago.

-

It gets even stranger several minutes later when he opens the door to his new attic bedroom, and there’s an unfamiliar bloke sitting on one of the ledges under the dormered windows, gazing out over the front garden through a window.

“Oh,” Liam says. “Um, hello.”

The boy ignores him, though, so Liam shifts awkwardly, and then clears his throat. “Hello?” he tries again.

The boy looks up at that.

“Sorry, maybe I’ve made a mistake, I thought--” Liam stops, because the boy has turned away from him again. Liam looks at him for a moment. He seems about Liam’s age, twenty-something, and he’s got his black hair shoved off his face in a swoopy quiff, the sort Liam had never been able to pull off before he’d cut off all his hair. He’s a bit thin, sort of lanky, and Liam can see a tangle of dark tattoos curling up his forearm and disappearing into the rolled up cuff of his soft-looking plaid shirt. He doesn’t glance back at Liam.

“I’m meant to be moving into this room,” he says eventually, a bit too loud for the small attic, and the boy looks back at him, sighing heavily.

“Are you talking to me?” he asks.

“Yes?” Liam says. “Who else would I be talking to?”

The boy frowns at him, looking confused. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then thinks better of it and closes it. Instead he shrugs, stands up from the window seat, and drifts over to the bed, where he flops down onto it, turns his back to Liam, and curls up into a ball.

“Um,” Liam says, taking a step backwards towards the door. The boy doesn’t respond, and Liam eventually reaches for the knob.

-

He figures he ought to find Harry and Louis, because possibly they’ll know why there’s a strange person in his room. Hopefully.

He finds them in the kitchen, and stops in the doorway, waiting for them to notice his presence.

“Liam!” Louis exclaims. “Hi!”

“Sorry, am I -- am I interrupting?” Liam asks, even though it’s obvious to him that he is, since Harry is sitting on one of the stools pulled up against the counter, and Louis is draped over his lap, getting in the way while Harry puts together a sandwich. Also, Harry’s not wearing a shirt. Also, Louis’ hand is shoved into one of the pockets of Harry’s trousers.

“‘Course not, mate, what’s up?” Louis says brightly. “Have you got all your stuff brought over, then? Room’s alright?” He pulls the sandwich away from Harry and starts eating, still sitting on top of Harry, who doesn’t look at all uncomfortable with the arrangement.

“No, yeah, everything’s good,” he says automatically, although it’s not, exactly. “Er, actually, it’s just -- when I went up there, you know.” He points up towards the attic, and blushes, because it probably doesn’t require clarification where he means. “There was someone already there? Another bloke? He looked, um. Comfortable?”

“Oh, that,” Louis says, waving a hand vaguely as he shoves half of the sandwich into his mouth. “That’s just Zayn.”

 _Oh, well_ , Liam thinks, _it’s just Zayn_. Louis says it so casually that it takes him a moment to realize that doesn’t actually clarify anything at all.

“I. Erm. Sorry, who’s Zayn?”

Louis says something, but whatever it is, Liam can’t translate it through all the food in Louis’ mouth. “I mean, it’s alright,” he says, because maybe he’s just misunderstood the situation. He’s got a history of doing that, it seems. “If it’s meant to be a shared room, or something, I just hadn’t realized--” And then he has another thought. “Or if you’ve already found someone, y’know, that’s fine. I can -- I can go.” He thinks of his three small bags, sitting in the front hall, that hold everything he’d taken with him from the old flat. It hadn’t been much at all -- too much of their things had been _theirs_ , and Liam couldn’t manage to make himself bring anything along that had been part Dani’s, too, not even the towels from the bath, so mostly he’s got clothes, and a few pictures of his family. It won’t take long to move it again, if they’ve already given the attic to this Zayn bloke and forgotten to tell Liam. He feels suddenly exhausted just thinking about trying to sort out another place to stay, but at least -- at least he travels light.

“No, hang on,” Louis says, forcing himself to swallow his sandwich and only choking a little. Harry pats his back soothingly. “The room’s all yours, mate, don’t go.”

“Alright,” Liam says, nodding slowly. “I don’t understand, then?”

“‘S’haunted,” Harry supplies, smiling easily. “D’you want tea, though? Sorry, I didn’t ask.”

“Um. Yes, tea, thank you,” Liam answers, because manners are important. “And, erm. What? Haunted?” He sits carefully on one of the stools across from the two of them.

“Zayn’s a ghost,” Louis says, carrying on eating as he lets Harry up so he can move around the kitchen to put on the kettle.

“Ha,” Liam says, trying to laugh and nod as if he understands the joke. “Ha ha, that’s a good one, lads.” He slaps awkwardly at his thigh.

“Nah, ‘s’not a joke,” Harry says cheerfully, peering over his bare shoulder at Liam.

“I’m surprised you can see him,” Louis adds. He’s inhaled the rest of his sandwich, and now he’s flicking crumbs about with his finger, scattering them off the edge of his plate. Liam resists the urge to pick up the kitchen roll and start cleaning up after him. He’s only been here an hour, after all. And there are probably more important issues at hand.

“Yeah, usually people can’t. I don’t even see him all of the time,” says Harry. “Plus he’s right moody. Y’know how they can be.”

And again, Liam is nodding, even though, no, he definitely does not know.

Louis is nodding as well, though, as if this all makes perfect sense. “Haz and I are usually the only ones who see him much. Well, Niall too, but.” He shrugs. “But, like, my sister Lottie’s stayed here before, slept upstairs and all, and she can’t see him even when he’s right in front of her.”

“He had a proper sulk about that,” Harry agrees, and hands Liam his tea, plus a few biscuits. “D’you want anything else? Lou’s eaten, obviously, but I could make something else, if you like?”

“Tea’s good, thanks.” Liam busies himself taking a sip of it, just to take a moment and figure out what’s happening. He decides that most likely, they’re taking the piss. Like, 75%. That’s a thing people do, sometimes -- play pranks on their new housemates. Other less-likely explanations include Liam having some sort of minor stroke and hallucinating this whole thing as a side-effect. His new room _actually_ having a ghost in it is at the very bottom of the list. Best to just play along for now, he thinks. He drinks his tea and tries to think, and not stare at how Louis is now licking a spare bit of icing from one of the biscuits off the side of Harry’s hand.

“We were thinking about going around to the pub later, if you’d like to come,” Louis says, once Harry’s hand is out of his mouth. “Our mate Niall works there. He’ll give us free pints, so long as the owner’s not around.”

It’s strange, because aside from the whole haunted room prank, Louis and Harry seem -- probably not quite normal, but nice. Liam’s only met them a few times now, once at the sandwich shop, and another when he’d come round to see the room and give them a cheque, but he thinks renting their attic won’t be bad -- might even be just the thing he needs. And getting a pint doesn’t sound bad. He can’t remember the last time he’s done that, actually, gone out for a drink with lads. So maybe he just needs to ignore the bit where they’re pretending his room is haunted. Maybe it’s whatsit -- friendly hazing, or initiation, or something.

“Alright,” he agrees. “I should start putting my things away first, though?”

“Right, yeah,” Harry says. “We can let you know when we’re about to go?”

“Okay,” Liam says, still feeling like he hasn’t quite got a handle on the situation. “Thanks for the tea.”

He heads for the front hall and gathers up his bags, and then trudges up the staircase. At the top there’s a landing and then a hall that branches off towards Louis’ and Harry’s room, the toilet, and another cozy room that Louis had called a study the first time Liam had been to the house, although all it had in it was a few guitars and a battered sofa. At the opposite end of the landing is the doorway towards the back stairs, the ones that twist down to a strange little nook behind the sitting room, and also up to the attic.

Probably whoever their mate is that they’d got to pretend to be a ghost has cleared out by now, he reasons as he climbs the stairs. He hadn’t seen anyone pass through the kitchen, but that’s up towards the front of the house on the ground level, so someone could easily have come down the back stairs and out through the back garden without Liam noticing.

Liam hopes that’s what’s happened, at least. He’s tired, and he just wants to put away his things and maybe have a rest. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with a surly bloke pretending to be a ghost.

At the top of the stairs he shifts his bags on his shoulder, takes a breath, and nudges open the door with his elbow, hoping the bloke is gone.

The bloke is not gone, in fact. He’s exactly where he’d been earlier, sprawled out across the bed, except now his shoes are off, and he’s got his sock feet crossed on top of the duvet. Liam’s duvet, now, technically. He’s got his feet all over Liam’s duvet.

“Oh,” he says when he sees Liam come in. “You’re back.”

“You’re still here,” Liam says.

Zayn -- although Liam hasn’t any idea if that’s actually his name or not, or just part of the prank -- scowls at him. “‘Course I am. This is where I stay.”

“No,” Liam says, losing patience. He lets his bags drop at the foot of the bed and sighs heavily. “Look, alright, whatever the prank is, I’m sure it’s very funny, but I’m tired, I’ve had a long bloody day, and I just want to put my shit away and sleep for a bit, so. Could you just clear off?”

Zayn looks affronted. “Why should I clear off? This is my room.”

“Really?” Liam snaps, feeling his annoyance build. “D’you rent it, then? Because I’ve just paid about all the money I’ve got in the world to stay here, in what I was told was a _vacant room_ , and I’m trying to be a good sport and play along, but this is really, definitely, _not_ your room.”

“Lou and Haz’ll tell you,” Zayn says simply, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Oh, yeah, they told me,” Liam says, rolling his eyes. “They told me that you’re a _ghost_.”

Zayn’s face hardens a little, but he doesn’t move. “Well. There you go.”

“There _what_?” Liam thinks he might be losing his mind, a bit. The exhaustion of the last two weeks is setting in, and this isn’t _funny_ anymore.

“That’s why I’m here, then.”

"That’s nonsense.” A small headache is blooming behind Liam’s eyes, and he rubs at it with the heel of his hand. “Ghosts don’t _exist_.”

“Sorry, what?” Zayn’s tone is brittle now, and his expression has gotten even more sour, if that’s possible.

“Ghosts. Do not. _Exist_ ,” Liam repeats, pausing for emphasis.

“You -- that’s not -- _ugh_ ,” Zayn splutters, looking furious, and a bit at a loss for words.

“Could you please just _go_ now?” Liam asks. He knows he’s on the verge of begging, but all he wants to do is _sleep_.

“ _Fine_ ,” Zayn spits. “Fine, alright, I’ll go.” He stands up from the bed, but -- Liam really must have a proper headache, or something else making his eyes go all wonky, because it doesn’t look right. Zayn moves strangely, too fluid, and the rickety bed doesn’t move at all even as he shifts his weight off it. “You’re a twat, you know that?”

Liam’s about to open his mouth to argue, to inform him that there’s absolutely nothing about this situation that makes _him_ the twat, but all of a sudden he forgets what he wants to say, forgets how to say much at all, because in one instant, Zayn is scowling in front of him, and in the next he’s gone, disappearing quicker than Liam can blink, leaving only empty air and a slight electric crackling behind him.

-

Liam stands blinking at the empty space in front of him for several minutes. He thinks he may have forgotten how to move his limbs. He thinks he’s forgotten just about everything, really. There’s a slight hum in his ears, more the absence of sound than anything, and everything’s gone all slow and syrupy, like time has suspended.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there like that, but eventually there’s a _thump_ from somewhere downstairs, and it snaps him out of the trance, breaks whatever spell had come over him. Sound comes rushing back, and he takes two jerky steps backward, his heart suddenly beating a drumbeat like it’s just remembered how.

Forcing himself to hold it together as best as he possibly can -- which is scarcely at all, but he thinks that ought to be allowed, given the circumstances -- he stumbles around the empty space where Zayn had been just a moment before, and almost breaks his neck careening down the stairs and towards the kitchen, where Harry and Louis are in pretty much the same position he’d left them just a few moments ago.

They both look up at him in a synchronized movement when he comes around the corner, and Harry makes a concerned little expression. Probably because Liam had only been gone for less than five minutes, and now he’s come racing back like a madman. If the way he feels is any indication of how he looks, he imagines he must look pale and on the verge of hysterics.

“You alright?” Harry asks.

“There was, um,” Liam starts. He doesn’t know how to start this sentence properly. “Zayn, and upstairs, and. Um.” He breathes heavily.

“Yeah?” Harry says.

“He disappeared,” Liam says. “Just, like. Into nothing.”

“Oh,” Louis says, sounding almost disappointed. “Did you say something to make him out of sorts?”

“I -- no, I mean.” Liam doesn’t know how to wrap his head around this, because the question shouldn’t be -- the question should be _how is there a ghost in his room_ , not whether or not he’s done something to offend it. “Well, like. I might’ve told him that ghosts don’t exist?”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t like that,” Louis says.

“Oh,” Liam says. He’s trying to will his pulse to return to normal. “Okay. He doesn’t, uh. Like that. So, um. You weren’t joking, then?”

“Nope,” Harry says, looking sympathetic. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I guess we sort of forget, since we’re used to it and all.”

“I just assumed it was a prank,” Liam says weakly.

“I wish,” Louis says regretfully. “That’d be legendary. Trick someone into thinking their house’s haunted by making Zayn pop round and then disappear. Except I suppose it wouldn’t be a prank, then, as much as an actual haunting. Hm.” He scowls a little, like he’s trying to sort out the details necessary to using a ghost as the punchline in a practical joke.

“So -- he can just disappear when he feels like it?” Liam asks. He wants to -- he doesn’t know. Get his head around this, if that’s even possible. It must be, because Harry and Louis seem to have acclimatized themselves to it all, to the point where they can discuss it calmly, in the kitchen even.

“Mm, sort of,” Harry says. “It’s like -- I mean, we don’t really know the rules.”

“The ghost rules,” Louis says to himself, laughing a bit.

“He can disappear if he wants, but it doesn’t always work all the way. Sometimes his quiff hangs about, or he just goes a bit pale. But then, other times people can’t see him at all, even if he’d like them to.” Harry shrugs.

“Have you, um,” Liam starts. “Have you asked him about it? The, uh. Ghost rules?”

“Oh yeah, loads,” Harry says. “He doesn’t really know either. He always says it’s not like he knows any other ghosts to ask anyway.”

“Listen, is it a problem?” Louis asks. “Like, we understand, and honestly, we didn’t think you’d even be able to see him at all, or else we’d have told you, but--”

“Bit hard to bring that up beforehand without sounding insane, though,” Harry finishes for him. “Figured it wouldn’t be an issue. But, um. If it is? You can have your cheque back, it’s alright.”

Liam breathes once, and then twice. He flexes the fingers on his hand and shifts his weight from one foot to the other and back again. He thinks about his options.

Option one is to take his bags and go wander around London and hope he runs into someone who’ll offer him a room, available for tonight, with furniture to sleep on, for a rent that he can actually afford. He’s skeptical that he’s lucky enough -- especially lately -- for that to work out for him twice in a week.

Option two is to find a hotel room, but he really, really hasn’t got the money for that.

Option three is to phone Danielle and ask if he can come back, at least for a bit, and that doesn’t feel like an option at all.

Which leaves option four: stay.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll, um. I’ll stay.” Harry and Louis seem to be doing well enough sharing a house with a ghost. There’s no reason Liam can’t do the same. “But he’s not, like. The bad sort of ghost, right?” He can scarcely believe he’s asking the question, having this conversation at all. But he’s never met a ghost before, and everything he’s heard always makes them out to be strange and scary, and on occasion, a bit evil.

“No! No, of course not,” Louis says, shaking his head meaningfully. “I promise, like. He’s just normal, pretty much. Sort of a twat sometimes, but he’s really a good lad. He’s -- is it weird to say he’s a good mate? Because he is, even if it is weird.”

“We like living with him,” Harry adds. “He’ll come around, y’know. If you two got off on the wrong foot.”

“And if he doesn’t he can mope about in the study until he does,” Louis says, shrugging.

“Right, okay,” says Liam. He’s going to roll with these punches, he decides. These very, very strange punches. “Listen, I think I won’t go to the pub with you tonight, if that’s alright. Sort of a strange day, you know?”

“‘Course, yeah,” Harry says. “Next time.”

Eventually the two of them leave the kitchen, Louis telling Harry as they go that he’s got to put a shirt on if they want to be let into the pub, because apparently that’s been an issue in the past -- Harry turning up half-naked, and being surprised when Niall wouldn’t let them through the door. Harry whines and drags his feet stompily up the stairs in protest, tripping gracelessly as he does, but when they shuffle out a half hour later, he’s got a jumper on and only a mildly sullen look on his face.

Liam stays in the kitchen for a long while, making several cups of tea and putting off going upstairs. He’s still trying to roll with the punches, but he thinks he can be forgiven for needing the space of more than an hour to get used to -- to all of this. Either way, he’s suddenly very aware of all the noises the now empty (or, like, mostly empty) house is making around him -- the refrigerator kicks on, setting a low hum thrumming beneath everything, and the stray creaks and bumps that are unquestionably nothing more than an old house settling make Liam jump every time.

He doesn’t go around the kitchen and sitting room turning on every single light he can find, but he certainly thinks about it.

-

He runs outs of patience with himself and finally decides to go back upstairs at half eleven.

Zayn’s not there when Liam cautiously pokes his head around the door. Unconsciously, he breathes a sigh of relief. He knows what Louis and Harry had said, and honestly, there hadn’t been anything unsettling or sinister about Zayn up until the point when he’d disappeared. But still. He’s a _ghost_ , apparently, and Liam’s never believed in ghosts, as long as he can remember, and now there’s a good chance one will be lurking around the corner at any given point.

He hates that it makes his heart race nervously, but it does anyway.

Zayn doesn’t show up while Liam starts to put his clothes away in the wardrobe, or sets up a picture of his sisters and their parents on the table beside the bed. When Liam goes to change out of his clothes into joggers and a worn out t-shirt, he realizes it’s possible that Zayn might actually be there, just staying invisible, but -- and he has absolutely no idea what he’s basing this on -- the room just _feels_ empty, so he thinks he must have gone somewhere else to be angry.

He still turns his back self-consciously away from the open room as he pulls his clothes off, though.

When he’s in bed and got the blankets pulled up around his chin, he hesitates for a moment before pulling the chain on the lamp on his bedside table, telling himself firmly not to be stupid.

It’s still a long while before he closes his eyes, though, staring up at the gabled ceiling in the dark, and even longer before he sleeps.

-

Harry and Louis are gone by the time Liam wakes up the next morning, shivering a bit from the chill of the attic. Louis teaches at a primary school, Liam remembers he’d said, and Harry does -- some course at uni, Liam forgets which one, in the morning before he goes to work at a posh little art gallery.

Liam stretches and feels his back pop. He hadn’t woken once in the night, which surprises him now, after the fact. Now that he’s awake he feels suddenly hyperaware, glancing around rapidly to see if he can spot Zayn anywhere, lurking in a corner or something. He can’t, as it turns out.

He stays in bed for a bit, watching a handful of tiny snowflakes drift past one of the windows. It looks bleak and gray outside, and freezing cold, and Liam’s briefly glad that he hasn’t got any reason to go outside today, until he remembers exactly why that is, and feels a familiar weight settle unhappily in his stomach. _Right_ , he thinks. _No Dani. No job_.

He bites his lip unhappily, and pulls the thick duvet back up to his chin, flopping back down and rattling the metal bedframe as he does. He stares at the few bits of dust he can see swirling around in the dim light that’s filtering in, and before long his eyelids droop, and he drifts off to sleep again before he can help it.

-

When he finally slouches into the kitchen several hours later, Zayn is there, sitting on one of the chairs.

 _So not a dream, then_ , Liam is forced to admit.

Zayn’s gazing out a window again. He seems to do that quite a lot. And also, somehow, he appears to be smoking. Liam hadn’t known ghosts could smoke. Then again, he hadn’t known ghosts existed at all until yesterday, so maybe the gaps in his knowledge are understandable.

“Hi,” he says tentatively. He’s surprised to realize that his frustration -- and later, fear -- from the night before have mostly melted away, now that he’s looking at Zayn. He feels nervous, but also, distantly, a bit guilty -- like, if the attic’s really Zayn’s room, he supposes he can understand why he’s upset. He’s a bit relieved that Zayn’s not off being invisible and angry with Liam, actually.

Or, at least, he doesn’t _think_ he is, but then he remembers what Harry had said last night, about how it doesn’t always work right, and Zayn sometimes stays visible even when he doesn’t want to. He’s looking different, now, less solid than he had the night before, almost like looking at something through a mist, or water. He’s certainly _there_ , sharp shoulders hunched over as he puffs a strange-looking cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, but this time Liam can believe he’s looking at a proper ghost. Even the smoke looks more insubstantial than it ought to.

“You’re not supposed to be able to see me right now,” Zayn sighs heavily, without looking away from the window.

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Liam says, feeling a bit defensive at that.

“‘S’pose not,” Zayn says eventually. He carries on looking out the window, breathing out the phantom smoke every few moments, and studiously ignoring Liam.

For lack of anything better to do, Liam sets about making tea and toast.

“How are you smoking?” he asks eventually, without making the conscious decision to do so. The connection between his brain and mouth seems to have gone shoddy.

Zayn shifts around to face Liam where he’s perching on a stool. “Dunno,” he says, shrugging. He’s starting to look a bit more substantial, and Liam finds himself hoping that’s a good sign. Technically, Zayn’s a housemate of his now. It’ll probably be best if they can get along well enough that Zayn doesn't have to try and will himself invisible every time Liam’s in the room. “I’m not really, I guess. Haz’d kill me if I actually smoked in his kitchen, anyway.” He waves around the hand that’s holding the cigarette, and it flickers as he moves, fuzzing in and out of clarity like a hologram struggling to find its footing. It doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke, Liam realizes. It’s almost -- it’s like flowers, like lavender. “Been smoking the same pack as long as I can remember. They never run out. ‘Cos they’re not real, I suppose. Only thing I can figure is they were in my pocket when...” He trails off. “Y’know.”

 _When I died_ , Liam assumes he means. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.” As much sense as any of this, anyway. “Like a... like a ghost cigarette.”

The sides of Zayn’s mouth quirk in what might be near to a smile. “Thought you said ghosts don’t exist.” He flicks the cigarette out of his fingers, and it winks out before it can tumble to the tile, gone as if it had never been there at all.

“I,” Liam starts, scraping a knife along his slightly too blackened toast, “am rapidly being presented with evidence to the contrary.”

Zayn does smile, at that.

-

Zayn doesn’t make much conversation while Liam eats the rest of his toast, but Liam thinks he’s not trying to go invisible anymore, so that’s good. Eventually it starts to rain, and Zayn stretches his arms over his head and floats off towards the study -- literally floats, hovering just above the ground, letting his toes point down lazily as he hovers up the back stairs. Liam gets the distinct impression he’s showing off at least a little.

-

They spend more time together after that, sort of by default, because neither one of them has much of anywhere to go during the day. Some days Liam doesn’t see Zayn at all, or just passes him on the stairs on their way to separate rooms -- Zayn stops floating, though, and mostly walks around like a normal person, only he doesn’t make any noise, unlike Liam, who makes the floorboards creak with every step. But other days, Zayn seems content to drift around near Liam, mostly silent, smoking his phantom cigarettes that smell inexplicably of lavender, flicking idly through books he never seems to read all the way through, or changing the station on the kitchen radio. He’s still mostly quiet, though, until Louis and Harry get home, or Niall stops by. Liam finds that he’s actually fine with this arrangement, sort of likes it even, and it takes hardly any time before he realizes he’s entirely used to Zayn’s presence, since in reality he’s more of a silent third roommate than a menacing paranormal entity.

But he still doesn’t have work, although he makes a few cursory attempts at calling openings he sees listed in the paper. He thinks he ought to be looking harder, but he’s still feeling a bit sorry for himself, and the quiet, sleepy atmosphere of the house during the day -- the cool floorboards, and the soft scent of lavender, and the way the rain knocks on the windows and the roof, and Zayn’s soft silent presence that Liam suddenly finds very soothing -- none of it makes him feel particularly motivated.

After three weeks, though, he wakes up abruptly in a panic, with nearly two months worth of deferred worry slamming into him at once. His pulse is racing like he’s run a mile instead of slept for nearly nine hours.

“Shit, _shit_ ,” he tells his empty attic room, and slams around to get dressed as quickly as possible, feeling overwhelmingly like he’s late for something important, even though he’s got nothing to be late for.

“I’ve wasted a month,” he laments to Harry and Louis in the kitchen once he’s dressed, resting his forehead in his hand.

“No such thing as wasted time, in my opinion,” Louis says from where he’s stirring sugar into his tea. Zayn’s curled up in a chair under one of the windows, occasionally stretching out his back in a distinctly feline way. Harry’s got his face down on the counter across from Liam, waiting forlornly for Louis to offer him his tea. Liam knows the routine, now, and even in the throes of his panic, that settles him a bit, makes him feel like he’s got at least something small to anchor himself on.

“It’s wasted if all I do is mope around the house,” Liam says, scowling at himself. “It’s been almost two months since I was sacked. I haven’t gone that long without a job since I was fifteen.”

“You’re allowed time to mope, mate.”

“Time to mope is like, a week, though. Fortnight tops. Oh, god, I’m going to be broke, you’ll have to evict me, I’ll have to live on the streets.”

“Pretty thing like you, though, you’ll do alright on the streets, I reckon.”

Liam rolls his eyes, but Harry laughs from where he’s face down, and even Zayn snorts. Liam hadn’t been sure he’d been listening.

“Liam’s too proper to be a good vagrant. Or prostitute,” Zayn says, not turning away from the window.

“Hey,” Liam says, not sure if he should be offended or not. “I could be a vagrant. Maybe? If I had to.” He doesn’t think that’s strictly true, but he feels like he should defend his capabilities anyway.

“No, he’s right,” Harry says, finally looking up. He’s got toast crumbs on his forehead. “Sorry, mate, you’d be hopeless. Dead in a week. We’ll have to keep you here, can’t have your blood on our hands.”

“Well, thanks, I think? But honestly, I’ll -- I’ll find something, I’ll make sure you’ve got the rent.” He feels a bit embarrassed, doesn’t want these lads that are rapidly becoming his best mates to think he’s lazy or entitled or the sort of person that sponges off the good nature of his friends.

“‘S’fine,” Harry says, waving his hand dismissively. “You can always pay us back in other ways.” He’s smiling in the way that Liam knows by now is a bit dangerous. “You can like, be our house boy. Cook us dinner, fetch us our slippers, sing little songs to entertain us.”

“God, no,” Louis says, pulling a horrified face. “I saw what happened when he made pasta on Tuesday--”

“Well I didn’t _mean_ for it to spill everywhere,” Liam protests. It wasn’t his fault Zayn had popped up at his shoulder -- literally popped into visibility -- and surprised him, causing him to knock a full pot of pasta all across the floor. There are still flecks of red of sauce he’d missed cleaning up in the corners, and the kitchen had smelled of basil the rest of the day. “Plus you don’t even have slippers.” He’s not even sure Louis has _shoes_ , since he barefoot almost all of the time.

“Anyway, you’d be put out if someone else did the cooking,” Louis says to Harry, ignoring Liam. Harry pouts, but he doesn’t protest, which is probably because it’s true -- Liam already knows how much Harry likes to show off his cooking, and the way he frowns and wrinkles his nose when he feels like the rest of them are in his way. He refers to it as “his kitchen” more often than not. Liam thinks Harry’s welcome to it -- he’s never been any good at cooking anyway, and the pasta incident just drove it further home.

“We ought to have left by now,” Harry says instead of arguing the point. “You’re late already.”

Louis shrugs disinterestedly. “What’s new, then? Not as late as yesterday, anyway. Compared to yesterday, I’m early.” He turns back to his tea, but a moment later starts to gather his things up, like it’d been his idea all along

They start out the front door together, but once Harry’s banged out down the walk, Louis turns back, coming back into the kitchen and leaning in to Liam so their shoulders touch.

“Seriously, Harry means it, and so do I. Not about cooking for us or anything, I mean. But if you’re in a spot with money,” Louis says, trailing off a bit. “Don’t, like. Just don’t worry about it, alright? We won’t kick you out. We’re keeping you.”

“But the rent,” Liam starts, but Louis cuts him off before he can make a proper protest, slapping one hand over Liam’s mouth and using the other one to twist his nipple. Liam yelps into Louis’ palm.

“You’re our mate,” Louis says. “You’ll pay what you can, okay? Don’t argue.”

And even though it’s against every one of Liam’s instincts -- the ones that tell him he’s only got himself to rely on, that he shouldn’t count on anything besides what he can control, that people can mean well and still leave you all alone to figure it out yourself -- he nods from behind Louis’ hand. There’s something about Louis, even when he’s being ridiculous and draping himself across Liam like an octopus, that doesn’t brook arguing with.

“They’re good lads, aren’t they?” Liam says to Zayn once Louis has gone. He really means to say it more to himself, but he’s gotten used to Zayn being there

“You’ve no idea,” Zayn says emphatically.

-

“What do you want to do, then?” Zayn asks an hour later. “Like, for work. Since you’re looking, and all.”

It throws Liam off a bit, because Zayn usually doesn’t talk much with him when they’re alone -- mostly just hellos and goodbye and questions that can be answered with yeses or nos. But he sounds calm now, like this is normal for them, and Liam knows it’d be impolite to just goggle at him, so he shrugs. “Dunno. I did editing before, for a newsletter. Don’t suppose I can afford to be very picky right now, though. I waited tables in school, I can always try that again.”

“Yeah, but what would you _like_ to do?”

“Um -- I mean.” Liam’s not quite sure how to answer, because that’s not ever really been a luxury he could afford -- he’d needed work that paid enough for him to get by, and it wasn’t really relevant if it was the sort of work he _wanted_. “I guess I’d like to write. I mean, I’m probably not very good at it, and I dunno what sort of work you could get from that, but. I dunno. The writing classes I took in uni were my favorite, anyway.”

“Where’d you go to uni?” Zayn asks. He’s facing Liam now, not staring out the window, and the whole conversation is so strange for it’s apparent normalcy that Liam bites his lip to stop from laughing.

“In Birmingham, but just for a year. Had to drop out. Couldn’t afford it.”

Zayn doesn’t make that pitying face that people tend to, and Liam feels immediately grateful for it -- he hates that face so much, hates anyone feeling sorry for him. But Zayn just nods and doesn’t push it.

“Do -- or did you, I mean. Did you go?” Liam winces, because he’s not sure if it’s polite to ask a ghost about his life, but it also doesn’t seem polite to only talk about himself, either.

“Nah, never went. Always fancied I might someday, but then...” Zayn smiles wryly, gesturing down at himself.

“What would you want to study?”

Zayn contemplates it, flexing one of his ankles idly. “Dunno. I liked to draw. And I liked comics. Do they have a course for like, comics?”

“Probably,” Liam says.

“That, then. That’s what I would’ve done, I think.”

The sit silently for a while, and they have enough practice with that that it’s not uncomfortable, but it’s starting to verge on it by the time Zayn speaks.

“Have I been a dick to you so far?”

“What?” Liam says, spluttering a bit. “No, of course not, it’s -- no.” The answer, though, is yes, a little, at least the first day or two. He’s hasn’t really been much of anything to Liam since then besides a mostly silent presence.

“No, I mean, I know I sort of was. It’s just -- it’s weird when new people come in here, yeah?” He sits up properly to face Liam, and twists his fingers around in his hand almost nervously, even though Liam can’t think why he should be. Nervousness seems foreign on Zayn.

“I can only imagine,” Liam says, going for sympathetic. “And like, I’ve basically stolen your room, so I’m sort of a dick too, yeah?”

Zayn wrinkles his nose in disagreement. “You’re really not. Plus you needed a place to stay. I don’t even really need a room, anyway. ‘S’not like I really sleep or anything, y’know?”

“Still, though,” says Liam. “It was yours first.”

Zayn just hums, and Liam doesn’t know if it’s an agreement or not.

“Is it weird that sometimes I forget you’re -- like.” Liam doesn’t know if he should say the word. “Mostly it just seems like you’re another bloke that lives here.”

“Not weird,” Zayn says. “Kind of nice, actually. I forget sometimes too, but -- dunno, I figured no one else does.”

Liam pauses, because he knows what he wants to ask, but doesn’t know if he ought to, but they’ve exchanged more words this morning than in the last two weeks combined, so maybe it makes Liam a bit brave.

“Is it -- could I ask, um, how?” He hopes Zayn knows what he’s talking about without having to spell it out.

“How I died, you mean?” Zayn asks slowly, looking at Liam carefully.

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” Liam apologizes. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s alright,” Zayn says. “Just. It’s not a very good story, is all.” He’s quiet again for a moment, looking down at the countertop.

Liam thinks he must be wrong. He thinks Zayn has so many stories, so many bits of him that Liam can’t even begin to imagine, but he finds he’d like to hear them all.

But he drinks his tea, and they sit.

“Are you going out?” Zayn asks him eventually.

“In a while,” Liam tells him. He’d meant to go first thing after breakfast, apply to as many jobs as he could humanly apply to before collapsing and count on sheer volume if nothing else, but suddenly he doesn’t feel inclined to leave the kitchen at all.

-

“Does it get boring?” Liam asks Zayn the next day. They’re both on the sofa in the sitting room, Liam flipping through channels on the television and pausing when Zayn sees something interesting. Mostly it’s cartoons for children and nature documentaries.

“Does what get boring?” Zayn asks. He slouched in a way that can’t possibly be comfortable unless you haven’t got any bones.

“Like, during the day, when Harry and Louis are gone. And you said you don’t need a room because you don’t sleep, so I just kind of... wondered what you do.” And Liam sort of knows -- Zayn smokes and looks out windows a lot, and sits quietly, sometimes near Liam and sometimes not, but that can’t be everything. He must’ve done something before Liam turned up anyway. Liam wants to hear about it.

Zayn is looking at him curiously, like it’s not a question he’s used to hearing, and after a moment he shrugs. “Read, mostly. Watch crap movies. Harry used to leave the telly on for me all day, I think because he was worried I’d be bored. I finally had to tell him to stop, though, if I’d have had to watch one more episode of Jeremy Kyle I’d’ve brained myself or something.”

“Oh,” says Liam. He’s trying to sort out the mechanics of it. “So can you not, like -- I dunno, move stuff? Couldn’t you turn the television on by yourself?” He’s sure he’s seen Zayn move things, adjust knobs on the radio and unlatch windows, but maybe he just doesn’t remember properly, or understand it all. He’s sure he doesn’t understand it all, in fact.

“No, I can,” Zayn says, reaching over Liam to press the button on the remote to make the telly go silent. “I couldn’t before, though, I guess I had to like -- practice? Try to be more solid or something, I dunno. Otherwise I would just -- y’know, _whoosh_.” He waves his hand to mimic passing through something. “I’m better at it now, though.”

“And you can go invisible,” Liam asks, although it’s not really a question, because he’s seen it.

“Sort of,” Zayn says, sounding a little put out that he’s not got it fully under control. “Sometimes. Most people just don’t see me in the first place, though.”

“What else?” Liam asks. He really does want to understand, and he doesn’t think it’s just out of morbid curiosity.

“I don’t sleep, really, but I sort of... space out, or something,” Zayn says. “M’brain goes all quiet, like. Which is nice, when it’s night and everyone’s asleep and the television is rubbish. And,” he continues. “Can’t touch anyone else.” He shrugs in a way that seems almost apologetic.

“Really?” Liam asks. It strikes him as odd, because he’s sort of forgotten personal space exists since he’s moved in, but he supposes if he thinks about it, it’s always Harry and Louis who are draping over each other (and Liam as well, now), and Zayn usually keeps his distance. He’d assumed that had just been because he had a sense of boundaries.

“D’you -- I mean, here,” Zayn offers, gesturing for Liam to hold out his hand. He does, palms up, unsure of what to expect, but Zayn angles himself towards Liam and then holds his own hands above Liam’s outstretched ones, their open palms facing each others. He raises his eyebrows at Liam and then brings his hands down, and as if there’s nothing there at all, they slip right through Liam’s.

He forces himself not to gasp, but he sort of wants to, even though he’d been expecting it. It feels like hardly anything at all -- sort of like water, sort of like a breeze, and then nothing, and there are Zayn’s hands, back in his own lap, looking solid and normal and totally unlike they’ve just passed through Liam’s like air.

“Oh.”

“Is it weird?” Zayn asks, almost shy now.

“Not weird,” Liam insists. “Well, I mean, a little, but good weird.”

“Alright, yeah. Good weird.” Zayn seems to think about that for a moment, but then smiles, mostly to himself. “I can live with good weird.”

-

That night, Liam wonders if it’d meant anything, Zayn showing him like that, letting his own hands slip through Liam’s. He thinks it does, but he’s not sure if he’s just imagining it. It felt important, though.

The next morning, Zayn is waiting for him in the kitchen with a cup of tea, and they spend the rest of the day watching television together again, like it’s a habit, an old arrangement between the two of them. Liam grins like an idiot the whole time.

-

“If you like books,” Zayn starts to tell him several days later, and then doesn’t finish the sentence.

“I do,” Liam says after a minute. He’s got a bowl of cereal balanced on his stomach, and there’s a documentary about lions on the television that Zayn picked, and he’s focused on sitting very still so he doesn’t upend milk all over himself, so he can wait to see where Zayn’s going with this.

“I think I’ve had an idea for a job you might be able to get,” Zayn eventually says. “It’s to do with books, so I figured, since you like to write, you’d probably like working with books. Maybe? Or I could be wrong.”

“At this point I would literally take a job where people threw books at my face all day, so long as it pays money,” Liam tells him.

“It would just be selling them, I think. At a second hand store.”

“That’s even better, then,” Liam says, because he doesn’t actually want anyone chucking hard-bound books at his face.

“I can’t promise it, but you should check it out,” Zayn says, and then rummages around for a loose bit of paper (a receipt for a pair of trousers Louis had bought the previous week, it turns out), and scribbles down an address and name of a shop that Liam realizes he’s seen before -- it’s several blocks away, closer to his old flat than this house, actually, but he can remember seeing the storefront at least once before.

“The bloke that owns it, his name’s Arthur, if you ask for him and tell him you’re a friend of Waliyha’s brother, he might be able to help you out.” Zayn passes the address to Liam, his fingertips briefly passing through Liam’s as he does, and it makes Liam shudder, but in a way that he doesn’t mind at all -- he likes it quite a lot, actually.

-

Liam doesn’t stop by the bookstore for a few more days -- it rains like mad for three days straight and the wind howls so hard that he worries the roof might rip right off the attic in the middle of the night, so he can’t quite find the energy to go outside, and then later there’s a marathon of James Bond movies that he watches with Zayn that keeps him busy -- but once he does, he spots Arthur right away (“he’s built like a tree and he’s got stupid hair,” Zayn had described him). He repeats what Zayn had told him to say -- “I’m a friend of Waliyha’s brother, he mentioned this place to me a few times” -- and the look that Arthur gets on his face is one Liam knows a lot about -- pity.

“I didn’t -- oh,” says Arthur, making that face that Liam knows is meant to be sympathetic, but comes out mostly a bit nauseated. “You two’re friends? Close?”

Liam’s not sure what’s going on, since Zayn hadn’t really elaborated on the situation, so he just shrugs and tries to look vague. “I guess you could call it that.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Arthur says breathlessly, and reaches over to pat Liam’s hand awkwardly. He knows this is pity, that he’s supposed to feel comforted, and he’s used it, has had this same interaction hundreds of times before, only he doesn’t think he’s said anything particularly pathetic, so he can’t work out for the world why it’s happening now.

Still, he knows what will happen as soon as Arthur makes that face, because in Liam’s experience, once people start feeling sorry for you it’s a short trip until they start bending over backwards to offer you things, and sure enough it’s less than ten minutes before Arthur offers to let him help out around the shop a few afternoons a week.

He’s got no idea what just happened, or why, but as he walks home, he feels a relief he hasn’t felt in months now. He’s got a _job_ , he won’t be booted into the streets or forced to become Harry and Louis’ live-in butler, or worse, charity case. He’s got _purpose_ , for what feels like the first time in ages.

“It go alright?” Zayn asks him when he gets back to the house. He’s draped over the sofa in the lounge, filling the room with the smell of lavender and reading an old Batman comic.

“Brilliant,” Liam says, waiting for Zayn to pull up his legs so he can sit beside him. Technically, he supposes, he could just sit down without waiting and let Zayn’s legs pass through him, but that seems sort of rude to just do uninvited. “He’s having me come in to help out a few days a week. I mean, it’s nothing full time, but it’s still -- it’s great. Thank you, really.”

“‘S’nothing,” Zayn says, smiling down at his comic.

“Who’s Waliyha, though?” Liam asks, because he’s been wondering the whole walk home. Zayn glances up at him, and the expression on his face is new -- sort of guilty, all squirrely like he’s been caught at something.

“Ah, I thought -- you didn’t figure it out?”

“No,” Liam says, feeling as if he must be missing something obvious. “Who’s Waliyha? Or, like, who’s her brother?”

“Um,” Zayn says. “Me?”

“You’re -- oh. _Oh_.” Liam gets it, now. Also, now Zayn is laughing at him.

“Did you not get that?” he asks between wheezing bursts of laughter.

“Of course not, I wouldn’t have -- if I did --” He drops his head into his hands, shielding his eyes. “Oh god, I’ve exploited my dead friend for personal gain,” he moans. Zayn only laughs harder.

“It’s not exploiting me if I tell you to do it, idiot.”

“It’s still wrong!” Liam protests.

“Says who? I’m the ghost, I’m fine with it, so it’s fine, see?”

“But he seemed so _sorry_ for me, he asked if we were close and I said yes, and he got that _look_ \--”

But Zayn cuts him off with a renewed burst of laughter. “Wait, sorry, but. Did you say we were _friends_ , or did you say we were _close_?”

Liam frowns. “Well I didn’t know we were talking about _you_ , first of all, and he asked if we were close, and I didn’t know the answer, so I just said something like ‘you could call it that.’ I think.”

“Oh, that’s just.” If Zayn wasn’t already dead, Liam’d be concerned he was about to go into some sort of epileptic state from how hard he’s laughing. He’s actually _wheezing_ a bit. “D’you realize what he thought? He probably thought you meant we’d dated.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Liam says. “Zayn! That isn’t funny! The poor man probably thinks I’m your grieving boyfriend, that’s why he offered me a job so quickly.”

“Liam, really, it’s _fine_ ,” Zayn tells him, trying to stop himself cackling. His success is mixed. “Honestly, Art’s an idiot, drove me crazy always hanging around our house eating everything and shit, so just consider it him paying me back a favor.”

“But -- but now I owe _you_ ,” Liam protests.

“You don’t, don’t be daft. I could help and I wanted to and I did, so just deal with it.” Liam thinks Zayn sounds startlingly like Louis in that moment.

“Alright,” he says eventually. He tries, and his success is mixed as well, but by the time they reach the end of an old Batman movie that’s on television, the guilt’s mostly gone, replaced by the relief he’d originally felt, and something else -- something that feels suspiciously like happiness.

-

He ought to see it coming, in retrospect, because honestly, it _always_ comes eventually. He knows Zayn had at least one sister, now, and later he tells him about Safaa, and his cousins, and a bit about his parents, and the dog they’d had.

But when Zayn eventually asks where his family lives, his stomach drops in that way that’s sickeningly familiar.

“Um,” he says, twisting the spoon he’s got in his hand around nervously. They’re in the kitchen while Liam has lunch, and he’s suddenly desperate to find something to occupy himself with, something more in depth than a single spoon. “Actually, my parents are dead.”

He’s said it before, of course, plenty of times. It doesn’t get easier, but at least he knows how it goes, knows what to expect from the conversation -- pity, first, and then uneasiness, and finally something unrelated but desperately important will come up so the other person can leave when they run out of sympathetic things to say.

But Zayn doesn’t make that sad, sorry face that everyone tends to, the one that Liam knows secretly means the person’s more uncomfortable than anything, because he’s gone and made it unpleasant by being an orphan. Zayn just nods, and Liam thinks he must understand better than anyone else how you’re supposed to go about handling people being dead -- how sometimes the kindest thing is to not do anything at all.

“It was when I was sixteen,” Liam says, and this part is new, because he doesn’t ever do this, doesn’t ever offer up details about it. But Zayn will understand -- he knows it, knows it like he knows gravity. “Car crash. They were on their way home from a weekend holiday, and it was February and their car hit ice, and, um. And that’s what happened.” He takes one breath in.

“What’d you do?” Zayn asks quietly. “After that?”

“My sisters took care of me, or. Like. They tried, at least. We just had my nan, and she lived in this facility, and she died the next year anyway. Ruth left eventually, went to the States, and I haven’t seen her for years. Nicola’s still in Wolverhampton, but she’s got... issues.” That puts it lightly, but Zayn doesn’t need to hear about the string of her rotten boyfriends are petty crimes that Liam’s mostly learned how to ignore by now. “Mostly I just... relied on myself, I guess.” Or at least, he’d done it as well as he could.

“Seems like you’ve done more than alright to me,” Zayn says, leaning in as if he might nudge his shoulder against Liam’s if he could.

Liam shrugs, close to Zayn. He wishes he could lean over and rest his head on Zayn’s shoulder. “I tried, at least.”

They stay like that, hovering just outside of contact, and after a while -- quicker than usual -- Liam feels the tension that he gets inside him any time he thinks about his parents too much start to dissipate.

“M’glad you ended up moving in,” Zayn tells him after a bit. “I wasn’t so keen on it at first, y’know, having someone else around, but having you here -- it’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, surprised with how much he finds himself agreeing. “I’m glad as well.” He hadn’t realized how much he means it, but now that he’s said it out loud he knows it’s true, and despite himself, he smiles.

-

It’s hardly any time after that before Liam realizes, with a bit of a jolt, that at some point, without him quite noticing it, Zayn’s become the most constant presence in his life. He’s around in the morning when Liam wakes up, and when he lazes around on his days off in his trackies and sweatshirts, and when he comes home from the bookshop shaking rain out of his hair. And it’s not just that he’s there -- Louis and Harry are there too, and they’ve slotted themselves into Liam’s life as well, so easily that he’d hardly felt it happening either, but -- but it’s different with Zayn. When he sees Zayn, he feels a bit of the tightness in his chest loosen, just an inch. He hadn’t realized the tightness was there until it started to fall away in small pieces.

And it’s nothing special, not really. He brings home films and they watch them together, and they play FIFA, and argue about Batman villains and which Avenger has the stupidest outfit (Liam is adamant that it’s Hawkeye), and all sorts of other things that Liam can’t remember talking to anyone about in ages. He thinks he ought to get sick of it, probably, being around the same person so often, but instead is only ever excited to get home and find Zayn.

He goes out with Harry and Louis, too, because for as much as Zayn is becoming his home, so are they. They take him to Niall’s pub, where apparently Niall performs sometimes, perched on a stool with his acoustic guitar and a backwards cap on his head, cursing a blue streak between songs. They almost always drink too much and stumble home too late, and they act like idiots -- Louis is a public menace when he’s pissed, in Liam’s opinion -- and Liam can’t remember the last time he’d actually had proper fun like this. It’s a relief to remember, at least occasionally, that he doesn’t actually have to be thirty five before he’s even twenty five.

And when he gets home, and Zayn’s there, he feels that swell of -- of whatever it is, in his chest, that’s what he thinks this must all add up to -- home. He thinks it’s been too long since he’s properly had one of those.

All of that, it wouldn’t really be a problem at all, except -- except for the part where Liam can’t stop thinking about what Zayn had said the day he’d gotten the job at the bookshop. That Arthur probably thinks they’d been together, when Zayn was alive. And that part doesn’t bother him at all -- it’s the part where suddenly, he can’t stop thinking about what it would be like, what it would be like to be with Zayn like _that_. He knows he can’t touch Zayn, but suddenly he’s wondering how it would go, picturing it with something like a desperate wanting. He startles himself with how much he _wants_ it -- wants to lean into Zayn’s shoulder, wants to feel the stubble on his chin and trace the lines of his tattoos across his arm and his collarbones.

It’s entirely inappropriate; that’s what he tells himself, hoping that eventually, if he repeats it enough times, it’ll stick.

So far, though, it hasn’t, and all he’s managed to do is give himself a cripplingly feeling of guilt -- he shouldn’t be wishing that his best friend wasn’t dead just so that he could feel if his eyelashes are as soft as they look, or what the inside of his mouth tastes like. That’s wrong in so many ways he can barely start to count them all.

He tells himself he can repress it -- he’s a force of self-control, an agent of his own destiny -- he can stop himself from having inappropriate, pervy fantasies if he puts his mind to it.

Hopefully.

He almost believes himself, until the third day in a row when he gets halfway through having a wank in the shower and is horrified to realize he’s picturing -- _someone_ , someone with dark eyes and narrow wrists, and dark lines of tattoos curling delicately across their skin.

He tries to rationalize that it could be anyone. There are plenty of people who fit that description, loads of people who are _definitely not Zayn_.

Except on the third day of this charade, he hears himself croak out “Zayn” under his breath as he comes.

When his breathing finally gets back to mostly normal, he takes two horrified steps back, until his back is pressed against the slick tile of the shower, and silently admits defeat.

-

On a Wednesday, without warning, Liam wakes up missing them.

It happens, sometimes, less and less often, but he suspects it’ll never quite stop -- waking up on a morning that ought to be normal, and then being suddenly crushed under the weight of it all.

He doesn’t get out of bed, because it’s the only way he knows how to deal with those sorts of days. They turn up unannounced -- it’s never on their birthdays, or the day it happened, just standard days that are suddenly made horribly wrong by the empty shape they’ve left. It’s best to just wait it out.

So he rucks his quilt up around his shoulders and waits.

Eventually, he hears the door to the attic creak open, and turns to see Zayn, tilting his head into the room.

“You never came down for breakfast,” he says, but he must notice something on Liam’s face, because he stops. “You alright?” He comes into the room softly, shutting the door behind him.

“I miss them,” Liam says, because there’s no point lying -- he thinks his face would give him away if he tried, anyway.

“Of course you do,” Zayn says softly, coming over to sit next to him. He hesitates for a moment, though. “D’you want company? I can piss off if you’d like to be alone, but... but I’ll stay, if you like.”

And even though he hates this -- hates the part where someone sees these bits of him, the bits that are a bit sad, a bit twisted around and rotten -- he finds he doesn’t mind, as much, when it’s Zayn.

“Stay,” he says, and then clears his throat. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

Zayn sits down next to him, and stays.

-

“I wish they were still here,” Liam says, hesitantly, hours later. It’s late enough into the afternoon that the sun is starting to set outside, creeping down behind the line of rooftops. Liam had slept for a bit, and Zayn must’ve stayed with him, because when he’d woken an hour ago, Zayn had been sitting cross-legged in a chair, looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

Zayn is across from him, now, the two of them crammed into the seat beneath the window, alternating between looking out the window and looking over at Liam.

“I wish -- I wish they were like you.”

Zayn’s face goes dark. “Don’t -- you shouldn’t say that,” he says firmly.

“I do, though,” says Liam, because he _does_ , suddenly, vehemently. “I like having you here, anyway, and -- and if there’s a way--” And that’s the thing, it’s not that it had been _easy_ when he’d thought there was no way for them to be anything but gone, permanently, but now that he knows there’s _something_ , and they’re _still_ gone -- he thinks that’s why this time, this day, it’s gripping him like a fist deep in the pit of his stomach, the weight of how badly he misses them.

“Don’t,” says Zayn, even firmer. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Liam looks up at him then, frowning.

“It’s easier like this. You can let them go.”

“It’s -- nothing’s _easier_ , Jesus,” he says, feeling desperate, although he’s not sure what for -- for Zayn to understand, to find the right words to make Zayn know what it’s like when the grief is like a sharp claw in his stomach, to figure out any of _this_ , anything at all, because he can’t, and he’s tried.

“I don’t mean _easy_ , but Liam, listen. Being like this, it’s -- sometimes it’s awful, alright? It’s lonely, and I’m...” He trails off and stands up from the window ledge, pacing idly.

“It’s terrifying. It’s cold, and awful, and not all the time, yeah, sometimes it’s better, but it can be terrifying, Liam, okay? So you don’t want that for them. Trust me.”

And Liam -- he wants to. He _does_ trust Zayn. But the parts of him that are still fragile and twisted-around are clinging onto the idea, now, and all he can think is that it’s not fair. It’s _not_.

“They could be here, though,” he says softly, and stands up to walk past Zayn, making for the door. “They could be and they’re not.”

“Liam, hang on,” Zayn says, turning to follow him. “Look, just wait.” And then in what must be a leftover gesture, he reaches out for Liam, to grab him just above the hand.

Liam freezes.

“Oh,” he says, staring awestruck at the place where Zayn is holding him around the wrist. Where he’s _holding_ Liam. Not slipping through, not moving around him. He’s actually touching him, solid and real. It’s not quite right, it’s definitely not the same as touching someone solid -- there’s a soap-bubble quality to it, like Zayn might pop away at any moment. But it’s _close_ , and the longer Zayn keeps his hand there, the more solid and real it gets. Everything else -- his sadness, their conversation, the whole room around them -- falls away in an instant, and it all narrows down to just this; to Zayn’s hand on his wrist.

“How -- how am I,” Zayn starts to ask, looking as dumbstruck as Liam feels.

“Dunno,” he breathes. “Have you ever -- I mean, have you ever done this?”

“Never,” Zayn says softly, shaking his head, still staring in disbelief. Liam feels the circle of his cool fingers tighten, and he doesn’t know if the electricity that shoots up his arm is because he’s touching a ghost, or because he’s touching _Zayn_ , finally, finally.

“Christ,” he hears himself say distantly, because he’s not the ghost but he still feels like he’s the one hovering outside his own body now.

“I’m sorry,” Zayn says, and it sounds far away. Liam can’t even remember what Zayn might be apologizing for, because this -- the feel of his fingers, the grasp of his skin that he’d never dreamed he’d ever be able to touch -- is all he can think of. It’s so much, but immediately he wants _more_ , wants every bit of Zayn he can touch, now that he knows he can.

So he pulls in, leveraging his arm backwards so that it yanks Zayn a step closer in, and then kisses him.

He means to pull back after a moment, but he can’t make himself. It’s just -- if he never gets this chance again, if it’s a fluke or if Zayn suddenly goes insubstantial again or something, he won’t be able to live with himself knowing he pulled away early. So he presses in further, and Zayn makes a noise that goes right through Liam.

Zayn pulls him closer until Liam’s pressed up against the length of him, feeling the solid press of his chest, awed at the realness of it. His arms loops around Liam’s back, keeping him from moving away, and Liam never wants to, wants to stay like this forever.

“Do you even,” Zayn starts to say, although most of it comes out muffled against Liam’s mouth. “Jesus, I’ve wanted to so badly, and I didn’t -- I thought.” He licks deeper into Liam’s mouth, and Liam groans at the heat of it.

“Can I -- please,” Liam stutters, wanting everything at once. “Can I just -- touch you,” he breathes. He wants to touch all of Zayn, doesn’t want to stop touching him, not ever.

“God, yeah,” Zayn says. His hands trail under the hem of Liam’s t-shirt as he presses it up, and Liam ducks his head so Zayn can pull it over his head. He wants to be closer, even the thin layers of their clothes keeping them too far apart. He yanks Zayn’s off next, and before he has a chance to really, properly look at him -- there are more tattoos, he notices, on his chest and stomach, that Liam’s never seen before -- Zayn’s pushing him backwards until his knees hit the bed, and they collapse onto it with a creak.

Liam reaches up to grab at the brass bedframe with one of his hands as Zayn starts biting down his chest, kissing hot, sucking little marks, and Liam can’t stop from groaning, because it’s so good, the heat from Zayn’s mouth searing him. Zayn glances up when he gets to Liam’s hipbones, like he’s asking permission as he tugs softly at the waistband of Liam’s sweats.

Liam swallows hard, and nods.

He shoves down Liam’s sweats and pants, and if Liam could think right now he’d probably be embarrassed at how desperately hard he already is, but as it is, he can’t spare a thought about it. Zayn’s mouth is hovering just above his cock, his breath hot, and then Zayn is licking his lips (and it’s obscene, Liam thinks distantly), and then his mouth is hot and tight on Liam, and he tries desperately not to buck his hips, or whimper, or black out. He doesn’t black out, at least.

It’s almost unbearable how beautiful Zayn looks, even as he’s sucking cock, his long delicate fingers splayed across Liam’s hip, dark eyelashes fanning over his cheek when they drift shut.

His free hand comes up to stroke Liam as he sucks, the hot wet slide of Zayn’s saliva slicking everything, and Liam groans, because he doesn’t want this to end, but he thinks it’s going to, much too quickly.

“Ngh,” he mumbles, and tugs lightly at Zayn’s hair, pulling him up a bit. Zayn looks up at him, eyes wide, and Liam _has_ to be touching more of him, absolutely will die if he doesn’t. “Gonna -- gonna come, if you don’t stop,” he explains in a choked-out breath. “Don’t want -- I wanna.”

Zayn must understand, because he nods, and pushes himself up so he’s lying next to Liam, their bodies lining up. “Yeah,” he says. “I want -- I want you to. Will you fuck me?”

He bites his lip, and Liam thinks he might be dying, because Zayn sounds unsure, and Liam can’t imagine why -- he think he’s never wanted anything more, will absolutely stop existing if he doesn’t get inside Zayn soon.

“Jesus, yeah, if you’ll let me,” he agrees.

“Okay, just hold on one second,” Zayn says, looking a bit wild in the eyes. “Fuck, have you got --”

“Oh,” Liam says, frowning. “Bathroom, I think?”

Zayn presses up from the bed, pulling a hand through his hair. “Wait here, yeah?” he says, and positively runs for the stairs.

Liam stares up at the ceiling as he waits, trying to remind himself how breathing works.

When Zayn comes back, Liam sits up, and Zayn crosses over to stand between his legs. Liam begs his hands not to shake as he tries to undo the zip of Zayn’s jeans, and succeeds enough to get it on only the second try.

When they’re both naked, Zayn presses him down into the bed again, and then curls up next to him, pressing the small bottle he’d retrieved from the bathroom into Liam’s hand. Liam steadies himself, taking a breath, and then pushes up, repositioning himself between Zayn’s legs He draws a careful finger over the cut of Zayn’s hip, the inside of his thigh, before stroking his cock a few times, and then flicking open the bottle and slicking his fingers.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says.

Zayn shakes his head, and Liam presses one finger in, trying not to clench his eyes shut when Zayn hisses in pleasure. “Jesus, yeah,” he says.

“There you go,” Liam says, working his wrist slowly -- probably slower than he needs to, but Zayn is whining and pressing into him, and by the time he slips in a second and starts to curl and spread them, Zayn’s gasping, and it’s possibly the most unbearably hot thing Liam has ever experienced.

On the third, Zayn’s eyes squeeze shut, and it’s only a few moments before he’s pushing Liam’s hand away.

“Fuck, go on,” Zayn pants, squirming and pressing himself back against Liam’s fingers one last time.

“Are you sure?” Liam asks, drawing them out slowly. Zayn just nods, twice, hard, and Liam takes a moment to collect himself before lining up with Zayn’s body, and pressing into him, slowly.

“Alright?” he ask when he’s flush against Zayn, holding his hips still as Zayn adjusts.

“Yes, fuck, it’s amazing, just -- just give me a second,” Zayn says, breathless. Liam thinks he’ll give him anything he asks for, anything at all.

“Alright, please, you can -- you can move,” Zayn tells him after a moment. Liam nods, pulling his hips back and then pushing back in gently. “More, c’mon,” Zayn says, and Liam says a silent prayer to whatever gave him this good fortune before thrusting in in earnest, trying to set at least a semblance of a steady pace.

“Oh my God,” Zayn mumbles, and Liam agrees, but he can’t think of any words, so instead he leans in, arms straining to support his weight as he kisses into Zayn’s mouth hurriedly, wanting to taste him all at once, wanting all of Zayn he can possibly get.

Zayn lifts his hips up to meet Liam’s thrusts, and Liam wishes he could draw this out forever, but he can already feel his arms start to shake, the tingle at the bottom of his spine, so he pulls back.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells Zayn, and shifts his weight to one arm so he can reach between Zayn and stroke hurriedly at his cock. He wants to see Zayn come, desperately -- he imagines it’s probably the most beautiful thing possible.

“Fuck, Liam, I’m gonna,” Zayn starts, and then whines in his throat, digging his hands into Liam’s hips and pulling him tight, fiercely.

“Yes, God, I wanna see -- I want to see you,” Liam tries to say, and then Zayn’s eyes shut and he clenches hot and tight around Liam, coming all over his fist, silent except for one ragged exhale.

Liam tries to hold himself still, because he wants to memorize this, wants to be able to replay this every moment of every day, because Zayn is amazing, is beautiful and hot and solid and _there, right there_ under Liam. He just stays like that, looking, until Zayn’s breath evens out and he nudges at Liam’s hip. “C’mon,” he whispers, and that’s it -- Liam’s hips jerk sharp and erratic a few last times, and then he pulls out, seeing white as he clenches his eyes shuts and comes across Zayn’s hip and stomach.

-

“Is this alright?” Zayn asks him, afterward. The bedsheets are tangled around their hips, and Liam isn’t sure he’s fully regained the use of his language faculties yet, but he’s getting there. “I’m sorry, I should’ve asked, I just...”

He trails off, and Liam reaches out to drag the tips of his fingers along his bare chest, because he _can_ , and he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop being amazed at that, that he can _do_ that.

“‘Course it is,” Liam tells him. “I want this.” And even though his heart is beating too fast, a sharp tattoo in his chest, he reaches over, feeling sure, to lace their fingers together. “I really want this, okay? All of this, not just -- all of it, yeah?” He shouldn’t be sure about any of this, but he is, suddenly, more sure than he’s been about anything.

“All of it,” Zayn says quietly. “Me too.” The words seem to float up to the ceiling, hovering in the air over the two of them as they curl together under the blankets, Zayn’s head resting on Liam’s chest, rising softly as he breathes.

-

It shouldn’t be as easy as it is, after that. It shouldn’t be easy to date a dead person, but it _is_ , as it turns out, because it’s Zayn.

Liam still goes to work, although he has to try not to laugh when Arthur makes vague, sad little comments about Zayn, because -- because if only he could know the truth. Liam comes home, and brings films and books and comics he thinks Zayn might like, and they eat dinner with Harry and Louis, and beg Harry to keep his trousers on during meals, and they watch tv and fuck around, and Liam is happy in a way he’d given up hope of ever being again a long time ago.

The only difference, really, is that at night, Zayn follows Liam up to the attic, and curls up next to him. He stays, and presses his fingers solidly into Liam’s hip, and licks into his mouth until Liam is gasping and pressing up against Zayn, marveling at how solid he is, how good it feels to have the weight of Zayn on top of him, at the feel of his cock and the heat of his skin and the way he gasps when Liam presses into him. He can’t imagine anything more amazing than that.

Zayn stays with him as he sleeps, and Liam doesn’t know if he rests, too, or just listens to Liam breathing. Sometimes when he wakes up in the middle of the night, Zayn’s gone, somewhere else in the silent house, and other times he’s perched in the seat beneath the window, gazing out, smoking.

As Liam drifts back to sleep, he thinks he’ll never get tired of watching the way the moonlight cuts in through the glass and lays across the planes of Zayn’s face.

-

Harry spots them after his classes one afternoon. Liam ought to be leaving for work, but if he’d thought it’d been hard to drag himself out of the cozy house before this, before he could not only _touch_ Zayn but kiss him and pull him in close and keep him in bed all day -- that was nothing, in comparison. They’re on the sofa, Liam wrapped around Zayn from behind, his face buried in his hair, and he can’t make himself move, not yet, and that’s when Harry walks in.

He frowns at them slowly, and then tilts his head slowly, several times, as if he’s trying to sort out what’s happening by looking at it from a variety of slightly different angles.

“How’s this happening,” he drawls. “With the... all this.” He gestures at where they’re touching, which is a lot of places.

Liam doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. Zayn just shrugs.

“Are you two, like...” Harry trails off again, and points in a terribly unsubtle way.

Zayn just shrugs again, but this time he smiles.

“And, so, like... again, how, and, like... what?” Harry asks incoherently.

“‘S’called cuddling, thought you might have heard of it,” Zayn says. “Since you and Lou are practically surgically attached, and all.”

Harry’s face brightens at that. “Oh, brilliant, Lou is going to _love_ this.” He scampers forward and, unhesitating, presses the tip of his finger to Zayn’s forehead. It stops, doesn’t pass through, Zayn as solid and real as anything else, and Harry whoops and then presses a wet kiss onto the spot as Zayn tries vainly to pull away, even though Liam’s body is behind him, blocking him from going anywhere.

“Lou!” Harry calls as he tumbles to the foot of the stairs. “Lou, c’mon, we can cuddle Zayn now!” There’s a thump from the region of their room that Liam suspects is Louis throwing something, and Harry rolls his eyes and starts up the stairs to fetch Louis.

“I think,” Zayn says darkly, “that I may wind up regretting this.”

-

Twenty minutes later, Liam is struggling for breath at the bottom of a five-person pile, topped by Niall, who Louis had called to come over straight away when he’d realized that Harry hadn’t been lying, and that Zayn really had become solid enough to manhandle properly now.

Zayn, somewhere above Liam, has gone completely silent, his eyes closed and with the expression of a person who’s trying to teleport themselves out of an unpleasant situation by sheer force of will.

As it turns out, Liam doesn’t go to work that day, because the rest of them refuse to let him up. He hates to miss work on principle, but can’t find it in himself to be properly sore about it.

-

“How does the sex work, is what I want to know,” Louis says casually at breakfast the next day. Zayn sighs heavily and drops his head onto the countertop.

“I’m just curious!” Louis protests, focusing his attention on Liam, going for an expression that he must think seems very innocent and unassuming. “I don’t know anyone else who’s fucked a ghost, is all!”

Zayn just groans again and floats off to the lounge, obviously not interested in this line of discussion, leaving Liam to try not to choke to death on his cereal on his own.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, patting him on the back and waiting for him to regain the ability to breathe. “That was rude, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Liam starts to nod, but before he can get a word out, Louis continues. “Does he do the fucking, then?”

Liam chokes again.

-

On a Friday afternoon, Harry and Louis invite Liam out to with him -- Louis is orchestrating a daylight hours piss-up because Harry’s finished a project for his course, and Harry is in turn grinning in a way that on anyone else would look threatening as he nods in agreement -- but Liam shakes his head. “Another time, sorry, I’ve got a massive headache.”

He does, too -- he’d been at the shop all morning, there’d been something violently wrong with the pipes and he’d been left to deal with the plumbers while Arthur was out, and after that he’d had to stop a teenager who’d been trying to lift a battered copy of _Moby Dick_ while Liam had been occupied at the register, for what purposes Liam can scarcely imagine -- the thrill of the steal, he supposed. As much as he loves Harry and Louis, all he wants to do is curl up on the sofa with Zayn, watch the first thing that’s on the telly, and not move until supper.

“I’m not moving until supper,” he warns Zayn as he pulls a quilt over them. Zayn is tucked up behind him and just smiles softly into the back of Liam’s neck, flipping the telly on, and Liam’s asleep before he can even tell what movie Zayn’s put on.

He sleeps through the film and doesn’t wake until the late afternoon. His mobile is buzzing in his pocket, and he frowns in confusion, because the only people who ever call him are Harry and Louis, and it’s neither of their numbers.

He misses answering before it clicks over to his message. He thinks about not listening to it at all as he waits, but the number’s unfamiliar, and it might be to do with work, so as soon as it beeps, he presses it to his ear.

The voice on the other end is tinny and unfamiliar. Liam listens very carefully, feeling himself go stiff and still, and probably pale as well. He listens to it again after it ends, just to be sure, and then shuts off his mobile and sits very still for a moment, trying to think.

“Shit,” is all he manages to come up with, and whispers it quietly to the room. “ _Shit_.”

-

“Hey,” Zayn says, looking up from where he’s sat at his usual seat under the west-facing window. “Sorry I left. The film ended and you looked tired, didn’t want to wake you.”

Liam tries to smile appreciatively, but he can tell it doesn’t quite come off, because Zayn gets a worried look on his face. “You alright?”

“I have to go,” he tells Zayn. “Back to Wolverhampton. Nicola’s gone off it. She.” He swallows heavily around the words. “She wrecked her car.” He tries to shove down the other details: the wall of the car park she’d hit, for instance, and how fast she’d been going, and how she’d been leaving a pub at the time.

“Shit,” Zayn says. “Li, I’m really sorry, that’s...”

He doesn't finish the sentence, but he doesn’t need to, because Liam’s already come up with every possible way to do so already. _The stupidest fucking thing_ , and _the worst fucking thing_ , and _the actual, literal manifestation of his nightmares_ all spring to mind, for instance.

“Yeah,” he says. “So I’ve got to go up there and see her in the hospital, and... sort this all out, I guess.” He doesn’t know how he’ll accomplish that. He doesn’t know what the necessary steps are. But he hasn’t got anyone to tell him, so he’ll have to figure it out on his own anyway.

“I don’t, um.” He hesitates. “I don’t suppose you could come with me?”

Logically -- or at least as logically as is possible, right now -- he knows he’s never seen Zayn leave the house before. If he could, he probably would’ve by now, Liam suspects. Liam knows Zayn, knows what he’s like and what makes him laugh and what sends him off into a mood, but he’s still not exactly sure how all of this works -- what the rules and boundaries and physics of it all are. His hands are shaking a bit, and he thinks he knows the answer, but he really, really wants Zayn to tell him yes.

“No,” Zayn answers slowly, folding in his legs and making room for Liam on the window seat. He sounds so sad about it that Liam immediately wishes he hadn’t asked at all. “No, sorry.” He sighs, and leans in close to Liam when he sits next to him. He feels solid and warm and real under Liam’s shoulder, and he’s hit with how easy it is, at any other time, when Zayn always feels so warm and real, to forget that the two of them are so terribly, hugely different sometimes.

The impact of it almost makes his heart break.

“I’ve tried,” Zayn continues after a moment, his arms curling Liam back against the sharp angles of his collarbone, his chest. “Can’t get further than the front and back gates, and even that... it. I dunno. It doesn’t hurt, but. It’s like coming apart, I guess.” His fingers thread into Liam’s hair and tug gently. “Like I’m spreading out, or like, dissolving. ‘S’awful.”

Liam doesn’t know what happens after people die. He’d been fairly sure, for almost all of his life, that it’s not much at all -- that you die, and it’s just like it was before you were born in the first place. Your body ends, and so does the rest of you, and that’s that. He’d believed that for ages, even when he didn’t want to, even at his parents’ funeral, when he’d wanted desperately to believe that they were somewhere else just out of sight, waiting for him.

And now he’s here, and he’s having a cuddle with a ghost, and even though he knows that he’d been wrong, he still feels less sure of it all than ever.

“Maybe that’s, like,” he starts. “I dunno. How you move on, or something.”

“Move on, yeah,” Zayn murmurs behind him. “Maybe.”

“Do you ever... ever want to, um. That? Move on?” Liam realizes he’s never asked Zayn. He’d never been brave enough to ask before now.

“Move on to what?” Zayn asks simply.

“I dunno,” Liam admits. “But there’s got to be something else, yeah?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Zayn says quietly. One of his phantom cigarettes has popped up in his free hand, and Liam feels a cloud of lavender wrap around him. “And sometimes I’ve wanted to. But it always scared the shit out of me, yeah? Because it could be worse. Or it could be nothing at all. And, I dunno. Maybe I’m a coward, but this is what I know, so.” He shrugs. “Never been brave enough to take the risk. Maybe that’s not even how it works, anyway.” He pauses. “And I haven’t really wanted to find out, lately, either.”

His arms tighten around Liam at that, as if to underscore his point.

“Well,” says Liam. Want he wants to say is that he doesn’t want Zayn to feel like he has to hang around just for Liam, if that’s not what he wants. He wants to tell Zayn that he’s braver than he thinks, and that if he wants to find out, he can, he should. He wants to say those things because he thinks they’re the right things to say, but what comes out instead is the truth. “Well I’m glad you’re here now, in any case.”

Zayn kisses his temple, and holds him there as the sun sets outside the window. They don’t move until Liam absolutely has to, giving himself just enough time to pack a bag and get to the station before the last train of the night leaves.

-

Liam gets into Wolverhampton just before midnight. The hospital’s closed to visitors until morning, so he finds the cheapest, closest hotel, rents a room, and falls asleep with his shoes still on, face down on the stiff plasticky duvet, alone.

-

Nicola looks like shit. Her face is bruised and her lips are bleeding and she can’t move without wincing, because her ribs are cracked and her knee is shattered where it’d been crushed against the steering wheel.

“You look like shit,” Liam tells her when the nurses let him in.

“Hey, baby brother,” she says. She’s got a weak grin stretched across her face, and Liam shakes his head before dropping down into the chair beside her bed.

“Tell me what happened,” he starts, and then he listens.

-

He stays four more days, sleeping in the motel, calling Arthur at the bookshop periodically to explain the circumstances and let him know he’s still away. Arthur, to his credit, doesn’t seem to mind at all, but Liam suspects that’s because he’s feeling sorry for him, the orphaned boyfriend of the dead boy with a sister in the hospital, so that only makes him feel worse.

When Nicola’s discharged, he brings her home -- or to her shit flat, at least, which he’d not even had the address to before, so at least that’s something, possibly -- and tucks her into her bed with her pain pills and crutches and mobile phone within reach.

“Is it good to be home?” she asks him.

He thinks about all the places he’s seen in the last four days that he hasn’t seen in years -- his primary school, the football fields he’d played on when he was twelve, the park with the tree he’d climbed once and then been too scared to come back down, the house he’d grown up in -- and thinks, none of that is home. Not anymore.

When she asks if he’s staying, he’s fairly sure she already knows the answer to the question even before he’s shaking his head apologetically. On the train, he’s surprised to realize he hardly feels sorry at all.

-

“Am I rotten?” Liam asks.

“No,” Zayn tells him immediately, and then frowns at him. They’re back home, curled up in the bed in the attic, Liam with the quilt up over his head. “Why would you say that?”

“Because the whole time I was there,” Liam says quietly, hating to admit it out loud, “all I could think was how badly I wanted to leave, how -- how there wasn’t anything there for me anymore, not even when Nicola was right in front of me.”

Zayn’s silent for a bit. “Did she ask you to stay?”

“No. But I don't think I would've, even if she had.” He sighs. “There's not... there's nothing there for me. Nothing good, at least.”

Zayn’s quiet for a while, petting Liam’s head and arms and anywhere else he can get at, before he speaks again. “D’you know how you’ve asked me, before?” Zayn asks, maneuvering himself so he’s laying next to Liam, their noses pointed at each others, almost touching. “How I died?”

Liam nods.

“You should ask me again.”

“Okay,” Liam says softly. “How’d you die?”

Zayn’s face is just an inch from Liam’s, and it’s so easy to forget there’s anything at all beyond them, beyond this house and this attic and this bed and just the two of them, curled up against each other.

“I don’t know,” Zayn says. “Isn’t that stupid? I don’t even know how I died.” He laughs a little. “Like, isn’t that the most crap thing you’ve ever heard? Wind up a ghost and I don’t even know how I got that way.”

“Oh. So you don’t -- what d’you remember?”

“Went to sleep,” Zayn says. “Went out the night before, went to a club, snogged some bloke. Ate a kebab afterward. And then I came home, and I went to sleep, and then it was two days later, and I was sitting on that damn window ledge, watching my mum cry while she sorted my things into boxes.” He smiles, sort of, at Liam, like Liam’s the one that needs to be reassured about this, like Zayn’s not the one telling the story of his own death. “My aunt was with her, and she said something about how the doctor said there wasn’t any way anyone could’ve known. Dunno what she meant, though, and then she went off, and my mum stayed, so I just sat, and watched her. She couldn’t see me, though. I couldn’t even see m’self.”

Liam can’t think of what he ought to say. Zayn doesn’t seem upset, not really, but it can’t be terribly easy, Liam thinks, talking about you died. But Zayn is, he’s talking and he seems alright, and Liam’s hit with a wave of gratefulness. He doesn't want him to stop. “What happened after that?”

Zayn shrugs. “‘S’foggy. Don’t remember the first few years much. Sort of just wavered in and out. Another bloke rented my room, eventually, but I never really noticed him much, and he never noticed me. The one after him was called Mickey, and I think he noticed something was... I dunno, off. He moved out pretty quickly. So did the girl after him, although I don’t think she was ever scared of me, which was nice. And then there was Harry and Lou, and they saw me straight away, and. And that was the first time I remember being happy. Since. Y’know.”

Liam knows. He knows desperately, and he kisses Zayn, once, hoping he understands what Liam means by it.

“And then you,” Zayn says softly.

“Did you ever want to find out?” Liam asks. “I could, y’know. I could try to find out what happened to you.”

“I think not anymore, not really. I probably would've said yes before, but now it doesn’t seem like it matters so much, d’you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” says Liam. He hadn’t known it until recently, but there’s a distance, he realizes, a distance you can put between yourself all the terrible things that have happened to you, the things you’d thought seep into every part of you, _become_ you. They won’t disappear, but after a while they quiet, they choke you less. Maybe that doesn’t make you rotten at all -- maybe that’s something beautiful. “Yeah, I reckon I do.”

-

When Liam wakes up on Monday, he’s by himself, which isn’t so unusual, because Zayn doesn’t always hang around in bed to watch him sleep -- Liam imagines that gets boring. So he stays there for a bit, stretching out across the bed that feels too big without Zayn in it taking up space, before finally getting out of bed to peer out the window (not raining, but it looks like it may soon) and heading to the kitchen to find Zayn.

When he gets down the stairs to the landing, though, he pauses, because he can hear voices coming from Harry and Louis’ bedroom, and one of them is Zayn’s.

He doesn’t mean to _eavesdrop_ , just wants to stick his head in and say good morning to both of them, but their voices are low, which makes him feel like he has to approach quietly, and by the time he’s almost to the door, he picks up enough of their quiet conversation to realize what they’re talking about -- him. After that, the eavesdropping just sort of happens on its own.

He peers carefully around the partway closed door. Zayn is curled up in Harry and Louis’ bed, and Louis is next to him, arms around him in a way that he must think is comforting, even though it looks a bit like a death grip to Liam. Zayn -- Zayn looks so sad, Liam doesn’t think he can stand to watch his face like that for another second.

“He’ll have to leave, eventually,” Zayn is saying, staring steadily at a spot on the farthest wall. “You all will, I mean, and it’s -- I get it, I do. This is a crap rental house, no one wants to live here forever. It’s just... temporary, for you lot.”

“Hey,” Louis says. “You don’t know that, okay? You don’t know what will happen. Maybe the three of us’ll just stay here until we’re ninety. Niall too. He can have the study.”

“What about after that?” says Zayn, and the way he says it breaks Liam’s heart a bit.

“We’ll die and come back as disgusting old ninety year old ghosts and bother you forever until you’re well sick of us,” Louis says firmly, like he’s already decided. Even Liam feels like he can’t argue with it, Louis says it so surely.

But Zayn doesn’t seem convinced. “You say that now, but forever’s a long time, alright?” He pauses and shoves up his shoulders around his ears, making himself small. “And the thing is, if I asked him to stay -- he would, I think, because that’s how he is, yeah? He’s too good, and eventually he’d want to go but he wouldn’t feel like he had to stick around for me, and he’d hate me. He’d have to, eventually.”

Louis sighs and squeezes Zayn tighter, if that’s even possible. “I dunno what exactly’ll happen,” he admits slowly. “But we aren’t going anywhere without you, okay?”

Zayn doesn’t answer, just tucks his head against the curve of Louis’ shoulder. Liam stays for a moment, and then ducks away and retreats back up to the attic, as quietly as possible.

-

He wants to do something, some grand gesture like from a film to prove to Zayn that he doesn’t have to worry, that Liam isn’t going anywhere, but the longer he tries to think about what it might be, the more that feels wrong -- it’s fine for films, but it’s not gestures that do anything in the end. Gestures don’t mean people will stay, or that they can promise anything more than the small things they do every day, one at a time. Zayn doesn’t deserve anything so hollow as a grand gesture.

So he waits until Zayn’s done playing FIFA with Harry, and then asks “Can I talk to you?”

Zayn nods, and Liam leads him up to the attic where they sit across from each other on Liam’s bed. Liam thinks about how this is the spot he saw Zayn for the first time, and it’s amazing how far away that feels, because he’s forgotten what it had been like, before, almost entirely. Flatter, he thinks, duller. Zayn is a new dimension, a spark of color he hadn’t know what missing, and now that he’s got it, he won’t let it go.

“I heard you talking to Louis,” he says. “Earlier today. And I just... I don’t want you to think I’m going anywhere.”

“Oh,” Zayn says, frowning a bit. “Alright. I didn’t realize you hadn’t heard, but -- but you can’t --” He stops for a while, choosing his words carefully. “You can’t stay here forever,” he finally says. He looks almost nervous, like he’s waiting for Liam to agree with him, and dreading it.

“Why, though?” Liam asks. And there are probably good reasons, loads of them, but he can’t think of them anymore, not one. “I’ve had enough of people leaving, yeah? I’m not going to do it to you, so long as you don’t want me to.”

“It’s not that easy,” Zayn protests sadly. “Like, I can’t even leave the house, it just -- you’ll get bored, you’ll want to go on holidays and out to dinners and I can’t, I’ll just be here, making you resent it all, eventually.” Zayn sounds so sure of it, and Liam wants to shake him so he’ll see how wrong he is.

“Just -- listen.” He tries to sort out the right words to say. “You don’t know that okay? Neither of us know what’ll happen, but that’s -- that’s okay, yeah? Look, I shouldn’t be able to see you in the first place, but I can. I shouldn’t be able to _touch_ you, but I can.” Liam does, then, just to remind Zayn -- he drags the tips of his fingers down Zayn’s cheek to his jaw, letting his stubble scratch as he strokes along. He pulls Zayn in close and ghosts a kiss across his lips, at the juncture of his jaw, at the hollow of his throat. Zayn still looks sad, but he sighs into it, and pulls Liam in closer by the waist.

“It’s changing, yeah? So okay, none of this makes sense, none of this should be, but it _is_ , and that’s all I need, yeah? I just need you, just like this, and whatever else there is, we’ll figure it out.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Zayn repeats. Liam doesn’t know if he’s agreeing, or trying to convince himself, or the universe, but it’s good enough for him in this moment, so he pulls Zayn in closer, and kisses him until the corners of his mouth begin to turn up.

-

Louis opens every window of the house on the first day the weather turns properly warm and sunny, including all of the ones in Liam’s room. Which would be fine, only he does at seven in the morning, when Liam is trying to sleep.

“Wake up, lads! The sun’s shining, there’re _things_ to do! Up!” He kicks ineffectually at Liam’s bedframe as he lets himself further into the room. Liam blinks, still trying to figure out what’s going on, because it’s _early_ and his room is suddenly very bright and loud and full of Louis.

“Have you even slept?” he asks warily. “You look manic.”

“Who has time to _sleep_?” Louis asks indignantly. His eyes are very wide. Liam doesn’t want to imagine what chemicals on the spectrum from legal to definitely not legal are running rampant in Louis’ system right now, keeping him so awake at this moment. This very early moment.

“If you don’t get out of our room in the next five seconds, I will actually, literally murder you,” Zayn groans. He’s all the way under the sheets, his breath warm against the knobs of Liam’s spine.

“You don’t even sleep, I don’t know what you’re sore about,” Louis says, ignoring the threat and carrying on opening windows. “What are you even doing under there if you don’t sleep? Wait, unless it’s a sex thing, is your mouth somewhere untoward right now? Oh god, don’t tell me if it is! No, actually, you have to tell me.”

Louis carries on, speculating about what filthy things Zayn might be doing to Liam under the sheets -- even though he’s _not_ doing anything except breathing on Liam’s back, Liam thinks as he blushes red -- and throwing open the rest of the shutters. The air is sweet and warm already, and Liam doesn’t mind, necessarily, but there are so many windows in the attic, and all of them creaky, and it seems that the weather will likely still be pleasant in an hour, or possibly two or three, when he’s been allowed to sleep until something closer to a reasonable hour.

“We’re playing football in the garden as soon as we’ve eaten, and we’re eating in fifteen minutes. Or as soon as Harry wakes up and makes it for us, I suppose,” Louis informs them as he waltzes out, shutting the door behind him as he goes.

“There’s no way I’m leaving this room for at least two more hours,” Zayn informs him, voice muffled.

“I’m locking the door now,” Liam says firmly.

-

By afternoon the five of them are all set up in the back garden, Harry and Louis giving up on any designs on actually playing football and just chucking it at each other’s faces instead. Niall is asleep face down on the small patch of grass and weeds, his hand still clasped loosely around a bottle of beer. Zayn’s been drifting around aimlessly, occasionally coming out into the sun to kick at the football half-heartedly before retreating back to a chair near the door. At first he’d just stood inside the door frame, like he wasn’t sure how far outdoors he’d like to go, but he’s made it almost halfway across the garden several times now. Liam’s not sure if it still makes Zayn feel like he’s coming apart, to get that close to the back gate, the line that had been drawn for him before, but it doesn’t seem like it at all -- Zayn seems solid, and happy, and pretty much perfectly normal, if the way he’s rolling his eyes fondly at the racket Harry and Louis are making chasing each other about is any indication.

The sun is still shining, and there’s still a tiny hint of a chill, but Liam thinks it’s actually perfect. He knows there’ll be more day of terrible weather, of cold and rain and wind, but this one day just now is enough for him.

He shifts around in his chair, rearranging the smile pile of things on his lap. He’d brought down a blank notebook he’d found in one of the kitchen drawers, and an assortment of pens. He hasn’t written anything in ages -- not since uni, he realizes with a short flash of regret -- and he doesn’t quite remember how the process goes, how to form words around to make them say the things he’d like them to, but for the first time in a long while, he’d like to at least try.

“What are you writing?” Zayn asks him when he eventually wanders over to where Liam’s sitting, folding his legs into one of the rickety chairs that have been sitting out in the garden all winter, going to rust. He looks solid in the sunlight, perfect and real and more beautiful than Liam could ever have thought anyone could possibly be.

“Dunno yet,” he says honestly, smiling up at Zayn and reaching up to twist their fingers together. “I was thinking maybe a ghost story.”


End file.
